In the West, where the object of life is commercial, financial, social,
or scientific success, that is, personal profit, aggrandizement,
and power, the real life of man receives but little attention, and
we, unlike the Orientals, give scant prominence to the doctrine of
preëxistence and reïncarnation. That the church denies it is enough for
many, with whom no argument is of any use. Relying on the church, they
do not wish to disturb the serenity of their faith in dogmas that may
be illogical; and as they have been taught that the church can bind
them in hell, a blind fear of the anathema hurled at reïncarnation in
the Constantinople council about 500 A. D., would alone debar them
from accepting the accursed theory. And the church in arguing on the
doctrine urges the objection that if men are convinced that they will
live many lives, the temptation to accept the present and do evil
without check will be too strong. Absurd as this seems, it is put
forward by learned Jesuits, who say men will rather have the present
chance than wait for others. If there were no retribution at all this
would be a good objection, but as Nature has also a Nemesis for every
evil doer, and as each, under the law of Karma—which is that of cause
and effect and perfect justice—must receive the exact consequences
himself in every life for what good or bad deeds and thoughts he did
and had in other lives, the basis for moral conduct is secure. It is
safe under this system, since no man can by any possibility, or favor,
or edict, or belief escape the consequences, and each one who grasps
this doctrine will be moved by conscience and the whole power of
nature to do well in order that he may receive good and become happy.
It is maintained that the idea of rebirth is uncongenial and unpleasant
because on the one hand it is cold, allowing no sentiment to interfere,
prohibiting us from renouncing at will a life which we have found to
be sorrowful; and on the other, that there appears to be no chance
under it for us to see our loved ones who have passed away before us.
But whether we like it or not Nature’s laws go forward unerringly,
and sentiment or feeling can in no way avert the consequence that
must follow a cause. If we eat bad food bad results must come. The
glutton would have Nature permit him to gorge himself without the
indigestion which will come, but Nature’s laws are not to be thus put
aside. Now, the objection to reïncarnation that we will not see our
loved ones in heaven as promised in dogmatic religion, presupposes
a complete stoppage of the evolution and development of those who
leave earth before ourselves, and also assumes that recognition is
dependent on physical appearance. But as we progress in this life
so also must we progress upon leaving it, and it would be unfair to
compel the others to await our arrival in order that we may recognize
them. And if one reflects on the natural consequences of arising to
heaven where all trammels are cast off, it must be apparent that those
who have been there, say, twenty of mortal years before us must,
in the nature of things mental and spiritual, have made a progress
equal to many hundreds of years here under varied and very favorable
circumstances. How then could we, arriving later and still imperfect,
be able to recognize those who had been perfecting themselves in heaven
with such advantages? And as we know that the body is left behind
to disintegrate, so, it is evident, recognition cannot depend, in
the spiritual and mental life, on physical appearance. For not only
is this thus plain, but since we are aware that an unhandsome or
deformed body often enshrines a glorious mind and pure soul, and that a
beautifully formed exterior—such as in the case of the Borgias—may hide
an incarnate devil in character, the physical form gives no guarantee
of recognition in that world where the body is absent. And the mother
who has lost a child who had grown to maturity must know that she loved
the child when a baby as much as afterwards when the great alteration
to later life had completely swept away the form and features of early
youth. The Theosophists see that this objection can have no existence
in the face of the eternal and pure life of the soul. And Theosophy
also teaches that those who are like unto each other and love each
other will be reïncarnated together whenever the conditions permit.
Whenever one of us has gone farther on the road to perfection, he
will always be moved to help and comfort those who belong to the same
family. But when one has become gross and selfish and wicked, no one
would want his companionship in any life. Recognition depends on the
inner sight and not on outward appearance; hence there is no force in
this objection. And the other phase of it relating to loss of parent,
child, or relative is based on the erroneous notion that as the parents
give the child its body so also is given its soul. But soul is immortal
and parentless; hence this objection is without a root.
Some urge that Heredity invalidates Reïncarnation. We urge it as proof.
Heredity in giving us a body in any family provides the appropriate
environment for the Ego. The Ego only goes into the family which either
completely answers to its whole nature, or which gives an opportunity
for the working out of its evolution, and which is also connected with
it by reason of past incarnations or causes mutually set up. Thus the
evil child may come to the presently good family because parents and
child are indissolubly connected by past actions. It is a chance for
redemption to the child and the occasion of punishment to the parents.
This points to bodily heredity as a natural rule governing the bodies
we must inhabit, just as the houses in a city will show the mind of
the builders. And as we as well as our parents were the makers and
influencers of bodies, took part in and are responsible for states of
society in which the development of physical body and brain was either
retarded or helped on, debased or the contrary, so we are in this life
responsible for the civilization in which we now appear. But when we
look at the characters in human bodies, great inherent differences are
seen. This is due to the soul inside, who is suffering or enjoying in
the family, nation, and race his own thoughts and acts which in the
past lives have made it inevitable he should incarnate with.
Heredity provides the tenement and also imposes those limitations of
capacity of brain or body which are often a punishment and sometimes
a help, but it does not affect the real Ego. The transmission of
traits is a physical matter, and nothing more than the coming out into
a nation of the consequences of the prior lives of all Egos who are
to be in that race. The limitations imposed on the Ego by any family
heredity are exact consequences of that Ego’s prior lives. The fact
that such physical traits and mental peculiarities are transmitted
does not confute reïncarnation, since we know that the guiding mind
and real character of each are not the result of a body and brain but
are peculiar to the Ego in its essential life. Transmission of trait
and tendency by means of parent and body is exactly the mode selected
by nature for providing the incarnating Ego with the proper tenement
in which to carry on its work. Another mode would be impossible and
subversive of order.
Again, those who dwell on the objection from heredity forget that they
are accentuating similarities and overlooking divergencies. For while
investigations on the line of heredity have recorded many transmitted
traits, they have not done so in respect to divergencies from heredity
vastly greater in number. Every mother knows that the children of a
family are as different in character as the fingers on one hand—they
are all from the same parents, but all vary in character and capacity.
But heredity as the great rule and as a complete explanation is
absolutely overthrown by history, which shows no constant transmission
of learning, power, and capacity. For instance, in the case of the
ancient Egyptians long gone and their line of transmission shattered,
we have no transmission to their descendants. If physical heredity
settles the question of character, how has the great Egyptian character
been lost? The same question holds in respect to other ancient and
extinct nations. And taking an individual illustration we have the
great musician Bach, whose direct descendants showed a decrease in
musical ability leading to its final disappearance from the family
stock. But Theosophy teaches that in both of these instances—as in all
like them—the real capacity and ability have only disappeared from
a family and national body, but are retained in the Egos who once
exhibited them, being now incarnated in some other nation and family of
the present time.
Suffering comes to nearly all men, and a great many live lives
of sorrow from the cradle to the grave, so it is objected that
reïncarnation is unjust because we suffer for the wrong done by some
other person in another life. This objection is based on the false
notion that the person in the other life was some one else. But in
every life it is the same person. When we come again we do not take up
the body of some one else, nor another’s deeds, but are like an actor
who plays many parts, the same actor inside though the costumes and the
lines recited differ in each new play. Shakespeare was right in saying
that life is a play, for the great life of the soul is a drama, and
each new life and rebirth another act in which we assume another part
and put on a new dress, but all through it we are the self-same person.
So instead of its being unjust, it is perfect justice, and in no other
manner could justice be preserved.
But, it is said, if we reïncarnate how is it that we do not remember
the other life; and further, as we cannot remember the deeds for which
we suffer is it not unjust for that reason? Those who ask this always
ignore the fact that they also have enjoyment and reward in life and
are content to accept them without question. For if it is unjust to
be punished for deeds we do not remember, then it is also inequitable
to be rewarded for other acts which have been forgotten. Mere entry
into life is no fit foundation for any reward or punishment. Reward
and punishment must be the just desert for prior conduct. Nature’s
law of justice is not imperfect, and it is only the imperfection of
human justice that requires the offender to know and remember in this
life a deed to which a penalty is annexed. In the prior life the doer
was then quite aware of what he did, and nature affixes consequences
to his acts, being thus just. We well know that she will make the
effect follow the cause whatever we wish and whether we remember or
forget what we did. If a baby is hurt in its first years by the nurse
so as to lay the ground for a crippling disease in after life, as is
often the case, the crippling disease will come although the child
neither brought on the present cause nor remembered aught about it.
But reïncarnation, with its companion doctrine of Karma, rightly
understood, shows how perfectly just the whole scheme of nature is.
Memory of a prior life is not needed to prove that we passed through
that existence, nor is the fact of not remembering a good objection.
We forget the greater part of the occurrences of the years and days of
this life, but no one would say for that reason we did not go through
these years. They were lived, and we retain but little of the details
in the brain, but the entire effect of them on the character is kept
and made a part of ourselves. The whole mass of detail of a life is
preserved in the inner man to be one day fully brought back to the
conscious memory in some other life when we are perfected. And even
now, imperfect as we are and little as we know, the experiments in
hypnotism show that all the smallest details are registered in what
is for the present known as the subconscious mind. The theosophical
doctrine is that not a single one of these happenings is forgotten in
fact, and at the end of life when the eyes are closed and those about
say we are dead every thought and circumstance of life flash vividly
into and across the mind.
Many persons do, however, remember that they have lived before. Poets
have sung of this, children know it well, until the constant living in
an atmosphere of unbelief drives the recollection from their minds for
the present, but all are subject to the limitations imposed upon the
Ego by the new brain in each life. This is why we are not able to keep
the pictures of the past, whether of this life or the preceding ones.
The brain is the instrument for the memory of the soul, and, being new
in each life with but a certain capacity, the Ego is only able to use
it for the new life up to its capacity. That capacity will be fully
availed of or the contrary, just according to the Ego’s own desire
and prior conduct, because such past living will have increased or
diminished its power to overcome the forces of material existence.
By living according to the dictates of the soul the brain may at last
be made porous to the soul’s recollections; if the contrary sort of a
life is led, then more and more will clouds obscure that reminiscence.
But as the brain had no part in the life last lived, it is in general
unable to remember. And this is a wise law, for we should be very
miserable if the deeds and scenes of our former lives were not hidden
from our view until by discipline we become able to bear a knowledge of
them.
Another objection brought up is that under the doctrine of
reïncarnation it is not possible to account for the increase of
the world’s population. This assumes that we know surely that its
population has increased and are keeping informed of its fluctuations.
But it is not certain that the inhabitants of the globe have increased,
and, further, vast numbers of people are annually destroyed of whom we
know nothing. In China year after year many thousands have been carried
off by flood. Statistics of famine have not been made. We do not know
by how many thousands the deaths in Africa exceed the births in any
year. The objection is based on imperfect tables which only have to do
with western lands. It also assumes that there are fewer Egos out of
incarnation and waiting to come in than the number of those inhabiting
bodies, and this is incorrect. Annie Besant has put this well in her
“Reïncarnation” by saying that the inhabited globe resembles a hall in
a town which is filled from the much greater population of the town
outside; the number in the hall may vary, but there is a constant
source of supply from the town. It is true that so far as concerns this
globe the number of Egos belonging to it is definite; but no one knows
what that quantity is nor what is the total capacity of the earth for
sustaining them. The statisticians of the day are chiefly in the West,
and their tables embrace but a small section of the history of man.
They cannot say how many persons were incarnated on the earth at any
prior date when the globe was full in all parts, hence the quantity of
egos willing or waiting to be reborn is unknown to the men of to-day.
The Masters of theosophical knowledge say that the total number of
such egos is vast, and for that reason the supply of those for the
occupation of bodies to be born over and above the number that die is
sufficient. Then too it must be borne in mind that each ego for itself
varies the length of stay in the _post-mortem_ states. They do not
reïncarnate at the same interval, but come out of the state after death
at different rates, and whenever there occurs a great number of deaths
by war, pestilence, or famine, there is at once a rush of souls to
incarnation, either in the same place or in some other place or race.
The earth is so small a globe in the vast assemblage of inhabitable
planets there is a sufficient supply of Egos for incarnation here. But
with due respect to those who put this objection, I do not see that it
has the slightest force or any relation to the truth of the doctrine of
reïncarnation.